Monday, April 23, 2007

The GSS says whites wanting to prohibit marriage between blacks and whites are dumb, but not crazy: The stereotype of a white nationalist (WN) is a inbred hillbilly who's missing some teeth and who missed school after about the 6th grade. But the folks of this persuasion on the Internet I've talked to are generally a smart bunch. My students stare at me in disbelief when I tell them that William Pierce had a PhD in physics. I imagine people who debate on the Internet are the cream of the crop, but I don't know--the dumb stereotype may be the product of hostility. And the image is not just one of low intelligence, but also mental illness. Just yesterday, I talked to a guy who lived in Hayden Lake, Idaho for many years and was on friendly terms with a number of WNs, but he told me that when he moved from there, the WN types were getting pretty psycho.

I couldn't find a perfect question to identify WNs, but the General Social Survey did ask if you are in favor of a law forbidding marriage between blacks and whites. Respondents were also asked if they have ever had a mental illness. Here are the results:

Keep in mind that that sample of those in favor of this type of law is small--only 59 people. But going on what we have here, these folks have a low average IQ but are less likely to have experienced some kind of mental health problem.

9 comments:

I wonder what the IQ is of people who conduct social surveys where they don't distinguish between social scale. Simple distinctions like:

If you were a woman and pregnant, would you ever abort a pregnancy that wasn't endangering your life?

Would you tolerate the existence of a state, anywhere in the nation, that allowed a woman to abort a pregnancy that wasn't endangering her life?

Would you tolerate the existence of a country, anywhere in the world, that allowed a woman to abort a pregnancy that wasn't endangering her life?

It doesn't seem to me that it would take an IQ that high to come up with a social scale for these questions so maybe what's going on is the social scientists are so intelligent they just leave it out or something.

Jim: I found another question we can look at that deals with attitudes closer to home: respondents were asked if they would object to having a family member bring a black friend home for dinner. The mean IQ scores for whites are:

The last two aren't much discussed as most people don't bother thinking about them, particularly the third. Most people aren't interested in invading countries to change their way of life, unless they work for Bush.

Ron, there's an old proverb I like to tell that describes the problem of "IQ":

Once there were 3 ducks in a pond discussing the approach of fall: a dumb duck, a smart duck and a genius duck. The dumb duck said, "Gee, its fall. I'm out of here." The smart duck said, "These dumb ducks are always flying south when fall comes without questioning their bigotry toward fall. I'm smart and I don't see any reason for this chauvinistic autmnophobia. It gets the slightest bit cold and the dumb fly off in a blind panic. I'm staying." The genius duck said, "Well, I'm not sure why the dumb ducks fly south come fall, but I feel the urge too -- and maybe -- just maybe there is some reason for it. Rather than stick around here to find out, I think I'll fly south for the winter and see what has happened to the smart ducks when I return with the rest of us 'dumb' ducks."

But then they were all killed by the imposition of a law against flying south for the winter.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be." ~ Lord Kelvin